Archos 605 WiFi sticks it to the Apple Ipod Touch
Product: ARCHOS 605 WiFi
Website:
www.archos.com
System Requirements: PC for recharging
Price: 4GB - ?199.99, £149.99, $229.99. 30GB - ?299.99,
£199.99, $299.99. 160GB - ?499.99, £299.99, $399.99
The ARCHOS 605 Wifi is the latest shipping PMP (personal media player) from said company. Just like all the others it has the ability to play all types of media from its in-built screen. This is either from the internal hard drive or from the wireless LAN. It now hails from their fifth generation of these devices and is set to take it to the Apple Ipod Touch.
The 605 Wifi screen is very easy on the eyes. Essentially it’s a 4.3-inch TFT LCD screen running in at 800x480 pixels in a 16:9 orientated design. The screen size hasn’t changed from the previous gen. Wifi model but the pixel depth has; from 480x272. It now appears to be much clearer and easier to view at all angles.
Also, the screen is 1.5 inches larger than the Apple Ipod touch it's up against, which has a lower resolution of 320x480 too. The casing has been updated to a new white-metal facia. It still gives off the vibe of having a bare-metal OEM look - waiting to be customised by another vendor.
ARCHOS 605 Wifi - all the angles
The touch-screen on the 605 just adds to the whole navigation method around the OS, rather than just relying on the cursor keys on its side. These are still included on the range and can be used in conjunction with or instead of. Archos has bundled a stylus for use on the screen, although no housing-unit is provided on the device. We did find the screen is very responsive to all the common features, which haven't really changed from others we’ve seen.
ARCHOS 605 Wifi ? UI
We looked at the 30GB model in the series, which has a decent capacity for most uses and users. But if that’s not enough there are also 80- and 160GB models, plus a lite flash memory version.
Ours came in at a bantamweight of only 190grams. Not too heavy for portable use or uncomfortable to hold whilst in use. And, just in case you do not wish to hold it for any length of time, they’ve ever-so-kindly installed a kick-stand. Archos even shaved off 100grams from the prior Wifi model - which came in at 290grams. All at no compromise to battery life either.
ARCHOS 605 Wifi
Archos states there’s 17 hours of audio playback and 5.5 hours for visual media. That’s an hour more than the earlier model in music and half-an-hour for videos. This is all running from its internal Lithium-Ion Polymer battery, which is fixed, so no extra units are available. We weren’t able to fully test out the full music-playing ability, as we didn’t have anywhere near just under a whole day to waste. We were however able to play numerous videos on a couple of train journeys. This amounted to close to five hours, whith some other miscellaneous use. All without recharging, which we believe shows a good amount of longevity in terms of battery life.
Which is handy, because we hit a down-point here in terms of charging. To fully recharge by conventional shipping equipment, that’s the proprietary Archos data connector to a PC - takes eight hours. That’s a very long time in our opinion, far too long to be reasonable. However, recharging by alternative direct methods it takes just three hours.
Fundamentally missing here is a charger for the 605 Wifi of any kind. The only way to top-up the battery is via that bespoke cable which terminates in a USB and a computer. Archos sells a docking station device for quick charging, which is their way of selling that unit.
There are other ill-advised by ARCHOS alternatives; one we found was the power adaptor that came with the O2 Cocoon mobile phone. If you don’t happen to have one of those to hand, this USB Mains Charger Adapter gives some idea of what else is available.
As for capacity, Archos boasts the 605 Wifi could hold 40 Movies, 300,000 photos or 15,000 songs. We did stack it quite high with video content and all seemed well. With music storage, that’s really a note of personal choice. As bitrates and preferred codecs by the user will always vary in the final file size, which will alters the stats dramatically. It does appear that the file system is only FAT32. Also there doesn’t seem to be a way to reformat the device for anything else. Which could affect larger files with the 2GB limit of that filing system.
It’s billed as a Wifi device with 802.11g, although it doesn’t come with a browser. This you have to buy separately from Archos if you want to surf the net. This seems rather odd and could prove to be a tad off-putting for consumers, in just the same way it did to us.
From what we can see, its predecessor, the 604 Wifi, came with an in-built browser. In this new version we believe this just limits its usefulness out of the box and hampers the selling point. Unfortunately we weren’t able to test out the web-browsing features. Archos still hadn’t enabled this feature for us by the time of going to press. Although we’ve been told it does have Flash abilities for viewing YouTube and such sites.
ARCHOS 605 Wifi Vs ARCHOS 404
One of the other features we didn’t have access to, even though we asked nicely, was the Content Portal. From here there’s access to a good range of media, which we only really saw at the launch. Not as wide a resource as AppleTV or similar products, but it looks like it could get there. Obviously, there are fees attached to the viewing of TV shows, music and films but it looks like it won’t break the bank. The fee-paying browser isn’t needed here, as there’s one in-built for just that single purpose alone for streaming the media over Wifi without a PC involved.
The key accessory sold with this unit is the DVR Station. It’s a docking station that provides playback from the device to a TV. Along with that, it also offers the ability to record video straight to the 605. This is all done through an EPG (Electronic Programme Guide) which is updated through the Wifi device itself. It depended heavily on the source of input for recording, but it comes off as a good accessory. The issue we have with this is its use for fast charging the 605 Wifi. It’s almost as if they’re forcing this as a “necessity” rather than an “accessory”.
The media used by the 605 offers up the most controversy, from forum posters and ourselves. For audio it supports MP3, WAV, protected and unprotected WMA. Here is where it starts - there’s a fee-payable plug-in for a H.264/AAC addition, not for DRM protected. This is the only codec Apple's Ipod Touch supports. There’s also a lack of RealAudio, OGG Vorbis and FLAC support.
All this came as a disappointment. As, for one, extra money needs to be spent. The other is in the missing lossless format, not so much the Real but for tech-savvy users the other is key for just sheer quality. On the audibility front, there’s just one speaker on the 605 Wifi and not two for stereo playback. Meaning the only way to distinguish and benefit from stereo tracks is via the headphones.
The video side is really where its all angled towards. Here the expected range of codecs reside. It plays most of the MPEG-4 XVID/DIVX and WMV media we threw at it. Although we found it couldn’t handle a few files from dubious sources - arrrrrr matey.
The on-screen error messages we received were around Quarter Pixel and GMC codecs, which it couldn’t play at all. In the end we found quite a few videos we couldn’t view because of just that.
Archos recognises this as a limitation, but offers no solution. This is a shame, as this does appear to be the choice format for many encoders for DVD to MPEG-4 format.
Now, here’s where we bang our heads against the wall again. For any MPEG-2 based video media, .mpg and .vob, another codec has to be bought in. Surely these are the most common formats users have legitimate access to from their own DVD collection. We’re unsure why this isn’t thrown in for free. ?
In Short
If Archos is truly serious about taking on Apple Ipod Touch, it's going about
it the right way in price. The Touch is going for $399 for just a 16GB model,
which is the same price for Archos 605 Wifi 160GB. The 30GB is priced at the
same as the Apple's 8GB. In capacity and a richer range of codecs it’s obvious
the 605 Wifi is a winner. However, there are just some niggling aspects holding
it back in our eyes. Other than those, it’s a good enough PMP for most users.
The Good
Plays video & audio, Wifi ability, capacity
The Bad
No battery charger
The Ugly
Need to buy ? Browser, docking station/charger, plug-ins ? to make it truly
useful
Bartender's Report
Share this:
Business Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
even with the extra features you have to buy its still an amazing product. i just wish they included two things, a drawing app for the touch screen, and a word processing app.

if they included those two things id get rid of my 604 wifi and pick up the 605 in a heart beat.

cool article btw : )
AT £200.00+VAT (1/2 the dollar amount) this would be serious competition for the iPod Classic 160Gb. But £299.99 is annoyingly expensive.
Its a ripoff in Europe, but the price is brilliant for the 160gb in N.America. 

It's a shame you have to buy plugins, but the browser is the only one most ppl need. And that can be used for streaming tv and radio stations. 

But as always, ppl are brainwashed into buying ipods and spendng more time converting videos than actually watching them and eventually give up on the video feature. 

You can even stream stuff from your pc/nas server to your 605 which means even more space. If you watch xvids a lot, this is a must have.
RealPlayer plug-in due in a few
weeks...allegedly.
ugly, bulky and no browser it's hardly comeptition.
and two of those issues that you have are absolutely so important to you that you'd take swallow an iPod pill. at least provide an alternative -- if you actually know of one OTHER than the iPod, mmmkay?


How about Cowon's players, mr author-of-this-article?
I have a 404, very happy with it and its DVR station. Will probably replace this with a 605 based on this and a few other reviews I've seen around. I must admit my primary reason for buying this device was its ability to display pdf files, I use it to read ebooks in pdf format. It also plays xvids faultlessly and the news about realmedia is v exciting as I use RMVB as my archive codec.
Just got one of these for my dad, nice piece of kit, but, was not impressed that a mains charger is classed as an optional extra.... very weird business model going on there Archos.
Looks awesome. Pity this won't get the same level of media coverage as the iPod even though its a superior product.

I wish you had put a photo of it next to your hand or something, so I can see the actual size of the device without having to get a ruler!
Only old xvids/divxs files really used GMC and quarter pixel or people who like to mess about with encoding settings. Use autogk and you wont have this problem. Nearly all releases of avi's from dubious sources in the last few years DON'T use GMC etc, Maybe xvid has developed enough that ppl dont need to add these features to get a better picture. And its not really an archos problem. The hardware chip used for the decoding just like in every dvd player that plays xvid and every other pmp that plays xvids doesn't support GMC and quarter pixel. 

Unfortunately more and more media players are just supplying usb cables instead of proper chargers. Was the same with my creative m vision :(
I bought both of these to see which one I would like better and return the other.

I definitely like the iPod Touch better - although lower resolution it is much brighter and far more vivid, and much more watchable in varied lighting conditions.

The 16GB Touch has more then enough space for me to carry my commuting music, movies, and tv shows, and is way more portable.

The interface of the touch is also instantaneous in almost all operations while the Archos is slower and clumsier. You also definitely need the stylus (which does not store in the unit!) to use the web browser efficiently, unlike the touch.

Also, although both get similar playback battery life, the Archos is VERY bad at holding its charge on standby - you need to remember to manually turn it on and off.
I reviewed the Sorell DN10 after I bought it. About US$120 for 3GB, a HUGE touchscreen, OGG playback, and even GPS. Only useful if you're in Korea, though.
http://ibeentoubuntu.blogspot.com/2007/06/review-of-sorell-dn10-pmp-dmb-gps.html
I bought one to use of long airpplane trips. So far, i've been happy with it. One problem that I have is that when I record a movie and watch it, especially on a plane, the Audio is too low, and I can barely get it up to the point of hearing the dialogue. Anybody have a similar experience?
Many nice features, video quality is decent but the unit crashes often. Battery life is poor, can watch about 1 1/2 movies and it's done. Forget about buying the battery dock as they are nowhere to be found in the US until late December. I'm amazed that Archos introduced this unit and you can't buy the accessories to make it fully functional. I own an iPod Touch as well and the video is comparable but the unit never crashes. The controls on the iPod are far superior. If you can live with the 16Gb of storage go with the iPod, it's a better quality product.